The debate likely will never end over whether the U.S. bishops had any influence on Catholic voters in last week’s presidential election. We’ve had several pieces, such as here, here and here, on the issue as well as links to some of the articles (e.g., here and here) our clients have been doing.

Taking a more in-depth look at something one of our stories from last week touched on, Our Sunday Visitor has an article in an upcoming edition maintaining that Barack Obama actually lost votes in states where bishops spoke out. What makes this article of more-than-average interest is that it’s written not by a lackey (ouch!) of the Catholic right or left but by Mark M. Gray, director of Catholic polls at Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. (Gray, some of you may recall, was also one of the researchers on last year’s readership study — is the glass half empty or half full? — on the Catholic press and other Catholic media efforts.)